


Inanna

by gardnerhill



Series: Oubliette [10]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Greg Lestrade to the Rescue, M/M, Prompt Fic, Watson's Woes WAdvent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 21:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16961706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: What does one miss most when one has descended into the Underworld?





	Inanna

Cold – gnawing, relentless cold eating its way to my bones. Pain chewing me apart from the inside out. And over all of this, utter blackness.

If I took a deep breath I would cough, and the coughing would drive the broken ribs into my lungs and kill me. Fortunately I was incapable of drawing a full breath – crammed as I was into this tiny, shallow hole, knees to my chest. The grating overhead let in foul smells and profane language from the gang upstairs, but no leavening of the inky blackness of my tomb.

I shuddered again, bare-chested in the March night and drenched in icy foul river-water by the gang that had captured me for ransom while I'd been making my medical rounds of the Irregulars' slums. They'd taken my Gladstone, would no doubt pawn the contents, and now expected a wealthy friend to pay for my freedom. Their gang headquarters, a once-grand house in a once-grand street, had been equipped with its own miniature dungeon, and it was in the oubliette's pit they had tossed me.

Afghanistan sun and desert dryness had once threatened to make a corpse of me. Now it seemed London winter cold and Thames water would do the deed. If I stayed here the night I was a dead man, already buried.

I had once known heat. Sweltering in Bombay, tossing in fever aboard the Orontes, holding my feet out to the crackling hearth, Aquitaine sun bronzing my back as I'd laughed and lowered myself to kiss a friend become lover. Another lifetime. I could not remember warmth. With that heat had been light, the sun bright and yellow or cruel brass beating down on my head. Light, another unremembered thing.

More yelling above, more profanity. But what followed seized me and made me shake, my heart pounding at the sweetest sound in all creation – the piercing squeal of the Scotland Yard police whistle, accompanied by the basso roar of the London constabulary. Scuffling, pounding feet down the stone staircase toward me, the crack of a nightstick across a skull, and a groan and thud.

Then _light_. The glorious yellow sun filled the cellar and poured into my open grave. I looked straight up into that blazing beacon of life and the angel who bore it.

"Christ, it's Doctor Watson!"

Not an angel. Constable Wilkins, holding a policeman's dark-lantern.

The short businesslike stride that approached told me who was here, before joining Wilkins. I believe I smiled up at that beautiful sallow rodential face that looked straight down at me with a little smile.

"Found yourself a bit of trouble, eh Doctor? Mr. Holmes may want a word with you about this."

Two constables lifted me out; I was engulfed in pain and cried out. But I did not close my eyes. Comfort and warmth and my love would be mine once again.

But for now I rejoiced in my return to the living, my salvation from the grave. I stood in the light.  


**Author's Note:**

> Written for the December 11, 2018 WAdvent Calendar open prompt, "Light."


End file.
